


Fierce Machines

by can_we_swap_owls



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Dubious Consent, Dubious pheromone pseudoscience, Hux is also broken, Lothwolves, M/M, Past Sexual Assault, Post-Battle of Starkiller Base, The Finalizer has A/C and it is broken, They're apparently canon but I did my own gross thing with them
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-16
Updated: 2018-06-10
Packaged: 2019-04-23 13:37:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,918
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14333595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/can_we_swap_owls/pseuds/can_we_swap_owls
Summary: It takes two weeks after the failure at Starkiller Base for his executioner to arrive.





	1. Cry Havoc!

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: If you want to read my coda/prologue about lothwolves and the origin of alpha/beta/omega traits in the Star Wars universe [read this first](http://momoformisha.tumblr.com/post/172981119587/fierce-machines-coda). If you don't want, the mythology is basically that there are several giant force-sensitive wolves that impart their traits to certain bloodlines as a gift (or if you slay and cannibalize them). Yep.

It takes two weeks after the failure at Starkiller Base for his executioner to arrive.  

“What an absolute farce,” Hux hisses under his breath, jamming his cap on and striding out into the greater hangar to meet the docking party. He turns his attention to his valet. “Not a kriffing word about the ghost.”

He takes a step forward; considers for a beat. “Or the omega.”

He looks between the incoming shuttle and his open-mouthed valet. She has a bead of sweat trembling at the end of her nose. “Or the ventilation issue. Just- keep silent.”

Since they were almost sucked into nonexistence by Starkiller’s death throes like a turd circling the drain, the ventilation system aboard the _Finalizer_ has been experiencing death throes of its own, fluctuating between cycles of blistering cold and, more frequently, sweltering heat. Unconsciously he grits his teeth. He supposes he should consider himself lucky he didn't have to scuttle her on some dreadful planet so insignificant as to have a number designation in place of a name.

“Sir,” TK-4422 says at his side, flouting regulation to speak to him with her helmet propped up on her forehead. Her hair is plastered in fine wet tendrils over her brow and cheeks. Insofar as he can tell, an unintended functionality of the plastoid stormtrooper armor is that it is effectively a man-sized sous vide. The only corps member not showing signs of having been mercilessly slow-cooked is Captain Phasma, who is rumored to have a cooling unit inside her chromesuit, but who Hux has caught several times shoving an air-conditioning duct directly into her abdominal plate.

Hux, who is typically as slow-blooded as a lizard and who has an admirable record of being strong-armed into the Vitamin D Chamber by med droids, is determined to be a beacon of self-possession and poise for his men. That determination notwithstanding, at the beginning of the cycle he did sit at the end of his bed glaring at his uniform trousers with a degree of resentment usually reserved for veganism and his bellicose co-commander, Darth Dickhead.

 _Arkanis_ , he thinks unclenching, like an invocation. The bracing sweep of morning rain, the musty smell of wet animals, of soil and petrichor. He steadfastly does not think of the line of sweat where his belt cinches at his waist, of the sensation of pomade melting down the back of his neck...

“General Hux, sir?” TK-4422 has given up the pretence of wearing her helmet and tucked it under her arm. “You asked for a status report once we had functional ventilation rerouted to the guest quarters?”

“And?” he asks, distracted by a cluster of astromech droids dispersing across the hangar floor towards the landed shuttle. “What’s the status?”

“Status is, uh...tropical, sir.”

He quashes a sigh lest any of his staff misinterpret it as a symptom of heat exhaustion. “Very well." He turns sharply. "Lieutenant!”

“Yes sir!” Lieutenant Mitaka steps forward, legs snapping into salute. Hux tries not to visibly recoil, taken aback. Mitaka looks like someone has been _basting_ him, his normally sallow complexion now a disturbingly succulent shade of pink. For the thousandth time he finds himself weighing the advantages of relaxing the dress code against the real and present risk of seeing Captain Edrison Peavey in shirtsleeves.

Unacceptable.

“Have the engineers look at all non-essential mech on decks one through fourteen,” he says. “I want any non-fixtures that generate a heat field switched off or spaced and their cooling systems diverted to guest quarters, even if it’s only temporary.”

He eyes Kylo Ren’s Upsilon folded neatly into a far corner of the hangar, wondering how he can use their current situation to jettison it and fraudulently include it on the insurance claim for Starkiller. He’s already had Petty Officer Thannison scrub the books of any log entries detailing equipment damaged or destroyed by persons unnamed in the last two years in order to attach them to the write-off (their current policy not co-paying acts of lightsaber).

“Yes sir! Right away, General Hux, s--”

The lieutenant's happy burble of confirmation dies off as the first of the landing party descends out of the shuttle. Hux follows his gaze.

Hux has been in a state of denial since the _Executor_ -class Star Dreadnought _Reaper!_ dropped out of hyperspace in front of his viewport. Of course the imperial vessel is only one-third the size of his _Finalizer_ , but her ion cannons are formidable - and she probably has reverse-cycle air conditioning. More critically, as the pool of officers qualified to command the _Reaper!_ is limited to two people, one of whom is Hux, there is a more than good chance that the person sent by Snoke to mete out his punishment is General Kalder Ferron. Still, on his way from the bridge to the hangar he had entertained the possibility of drastic and fortuitous restructuring in the wake of the Hosnian Cataclysm, so it is rather a blow that the man descending the off-ramp with a worthy facsimile of Hux’s own haughty stride is indeed his old Academy mate.

Ferron, a fellow Arkanisian, has the sort of blue-blooded fair good looks that distinguish him from the wetside where Hux was born. They are both ghastly pale (every Arkanis native has skin near transparent) but Ferron looks like a man who sleeps well, and not alone, and subsists off more than lukewarm caf and ration jelly, and his wide mouth and square jaw make him what one might consider conventionally handsome. Hux remembers well that he has sharp eyeteeth when he smiles.

He takes in Mitaka’s flushed cheeks, the sudden febrile-sweet scent of him teasing the back of Hux’s throat.

 _Oh_.

Hux feels the temperature in the hangar surge impossibly, his face suddenly so hot he feels like he could solder through a bulkhead with it. How could he forget? How could he be so stubbornly and wilfully underprepared? Among Ferron’s many irritating and ruinous features, he is also a vestigial alpha.

It really is poor luck, seeing as the public list of First Order personnel with presenting traits is a short one, and the list of alpha members even shorter, including, once again, Hux himself. Given that alpha-presenting folk tend to gravitate towards positions of power it is not a surprise that Ferron has finally chased down a promotion equal to Hux’s own. The superior genetics do give one an authoritative edge after all. It _is_  a surprise, however, that Snoke clearly hasn’t taken their conflicting biology into account when assigning an administrator to deliver the coup de grace.

Unless he has. It wouldn’t be the first time.

Very well, he thinks, irked. Snoke has sent a specter from Hux’s shameful past to oversee this final official humiliation, to be the auditor of his fall from the annals of Order history and even perhaps, as the crowning insult, become his golden successor. Brendol would have loved to have been alive to see this - had preferred Ferron over him at every turn. Ferron who was upstanding and gifted, magnetic by nature, filial to a fault. And who had not even slightly tried to poison Brendol to death. 

And, Hux realizes with growing irritation, with the ventilation out, Ferron is going to be pumping his pissy proprietary pheromones all over Hux’s staff - all over Hux’s _ship_. There's no detergent in the galaxy strong enough to get that scent out. Unless Hux invents it. Unless Snoke gives him special dispensation to head up a team of chemists to invent it... Unlikely. 

Hux eyes the phalanx of bodyguards and attendants the general has brought with him --

\-- and has to swallow hard around the shout of horror that bubbles up in his throat. Because one of the men descending the ramp behind him is unmistakably and cataclysmically, Kylo Ren. 

Hux shouldn’t know him by his posture alone, and yet he does, immediately. The man is incapable of any form of locomotion that does not approximate that of a particularly cantankerous toddler. The steel grating jars and thuds under his boots as he stomps down the off-ramp, cowl trailing limply behind him.

Hux feels his hackles rising. He does a series of mental and physical checks in quick succession and then turns to Mitaka.

“Send word to medbay. I want all presenting staff to report for a suppressant booster.” He swallows around a sudden overabundance of saliva, his face suffusing with heat. _Damn climate_. He had not expected Ren to survive his injuries, had actually already partially composed a nastily generic eulogy for the offical funeral. He recalls suddenly and with growing dread that not two days out from Ren’s emergency extraction he had his co-commander’s quarters annexed for his own purposes. Purposes that had no contingency plan for Ren's returning to service aboard the _Finalizer_ so soon and outside of a casket. Shit. Shit shit _shit_.

“Have the droids give Ren’s quarters a full service,” he adds to Mitaka, sotto voce. “Discrete. Prioritizing laundry. And I’ll need a fresh phero-seal on my own quarters.”

Of course, the Supreme Leader had not disclosed his apprentice’s alpha status until _after_ Hux had submitted the _Finalizer’s_  blueprints. If he’d known that he was to be saddled with the knight as his neighbor adjacent he would have designed command suites on opposite ends of the deck. Actually, had he had any notion of his co-commander’s personality or nighttime habits, regardless of biology, he would have done his level best to put _parsecs_ between them. If Ferron and Hux are men who are, as a secondary characteristic, alphas, then Ren is an alpha masquerading as a man. Poorly. And his backwards little schism precludes the use of regular hormone suppressants, so to any alpha within range he smells like an assault, like fresh turpentine; and to omegas like Mitaka, going off the sudden bloom of his enormous pupils, he probably smells like the dicking of a lifetime.

As his two least favorite people approach, Hux entertains the thought of using his monomolecular blade. Hypothetically, if Hux had only one shot and had to choose between nixing Ferron or Kylo Ren, he would choose Ferron, but only because Ren has never seen him naked and laughed about it. Just as he thinks this he remembers that Ren is a Force-user and a mindreader, and that his last encounter with Ferron is one of two very large secrets that Hux cannot allow Kylo Ren to know. He chastised himself for the lapse; kills the train of thought, pressing a thumb hard into the wolf-mark on his palm to remind himself. _You are marked for greatness. You are among the wolves of war but you are also a wolf of war_.

“You look thin, Armitage!” Ferron says by way of greeting. FK-4422 bristles at his back, reassuringly offended on his behalf. “To be expected, I suppose,” he says before Hux can get a word in. “We should count ourselves lucky you haven’t fallen apart given the situation.” By ‘situation’ he imagines Ferron is referring to the implosion of his life’s work and the Order’s greatest weapon - an event precipitated by Ren chasing a ghost instead of doing his job.

_Oh no, don’t think about ghosts. Don’t think about **the** ghost. _

Ren’s bucketed head tilts, questing. Hux feels the first tickle of panic like bitter venom in the pit of his stomach. He makes a concerted effort to think loudly about the plethora of images - by turn nauseatingly prurient and mind-numbingly boring - that usually sends the knight reeling out of his brain: flushing Millicent’s soggy hairballs, updating his datapad operating system, a fantasy of screwing the late Grand Admiral Rax.

“Welcome aboard the _Finalizer_ , General Ferron,” Hux hears himself say from a distance, already piecing together a plan to mitigate the rolling disaster that is having Ren unexpectedly back on his ship. He’d been sure the knight would be out of action for longer. The last time he’d seen him he’d been-- 

\--in pieces. And young, unexpectedly young. Hux had glimpsed his face before of course: a stark pale profile in the dim lighting of the holochamber, half-hidden by sulking posture and a sweep of intriguingly dark hair. Those few glimpses had been dangerous, illicit, like petting a reptile and anticipating the strike. Even as he was compelled to look, he knew nothing good could come of knowing the alpha’s face.  

But on the heaving, screaming surface of Starkiller not two yards from the oscillator, Hux had stumbled upon Kylo Ren, the boy. He looked like a toy doll that had been dropped from a great height; a smear of muted black, broken porcelain joined poorly at a glistening seam of cauterized flesh, the long face sundered and strange, mouth an unhappy knot. 

Hux’s cap wings were pulled down around his ears but did nothing to keep the icy, blowy sleet from stinging his eyes and cheeks, from crystallizing on his brows and lashes in a thick crust that made it near impossible to see. His lips were so chapped they felt hot, like non-skin, like peeled grapes, and his uniform, so meticulously engineered against the insidious cold of space, was as good as gossamer against the driving cold of the dying planet. 

Kylo Ren was smaller when bleeding as men often were. Hux took a moment to contemplate the dual endowments contained within the thin skin of the younger man's body: the vast, intangible power Ren could harness and draw to him, and the core part of him down to his cells, born to control and command. How easy it would be for a comparatively weak creature such as Hux to undo him like this: as easy as tugging on a loose thread.

Ren tracked Hux warily as he crunched towards him in the snow, mouth a squirming line of suppressed pain but eyes burning with visceral hatred. Hux stopped out of kicking range and commed the extraction squad for pickup without breaking eye contact. The ground beneath them yawned ominously and a line of petrified trees shuddered and collapsed into the new maw of molten slag that roared and spat. Ren made a wet gasping sound, body limp but gloved fingers twitching in the snow.

“Do you require any urgent medical attention?” Hux asked drily, tucking his commlink away.

Ren glared at him, lips pale and tight. Hux felt a clumsy attempt of the Force against his mind, a sticky thumb smearing across his frontal lobe, but he batted it away, sneering. “Try that again and I’ll leave you here, you little fool.”

It occurred to him that Ren had a mark of war now too, or more accurately, a mark of failure - one for everyone to see. Hux _should_ leave him here, to get swallowed up with the rest of their failures, their disappointments. But Snoke had ordered it. _Retrieve the asset. Abandon the weapon. Bring Kylo Ren to me, alive_. 

Grudgingly, Hux knelt by his co-commander’s side for field triage. The man's tunic and leggings were wet through with snow, stiff with streaks of glittering blood and marred by singe marks. As was typical of alphas, Ren’s blood ran hot, and one side of his tunic was saturated at the waist with warm blood. On closer inspection, the man did look feverish, pallid skin glossy with exertion. A peculiar acrid scent was coming off him in waves. Fear. And…loss? A taste like burnt butterscotch. Just as Hux fell upon that association he was lost to the strange sweetness of it, mouth flooding and throat seizing up. He grabbed Ren’s side out of desperation, squeezing viciously. Ren didn’t scream but his eyes bugged, white all around, mouth opening in a silent rictus of pain. One of his legs kicked out weakly, body sliding in the snow before he went completely limp, eyes rolling back in his head. He was unconscious, the scent dissipating, blood soaking slowly through Hux’s glove.

Hux breathed out raggedly, watching the snow bloom with vivid red as the life leached from Ren's pale features.

He shouldn’t have done it. It was an impulse, and he was well practiced at ignoring those, yet he found himself leaning forward to pluck a lock of dark wet hair out of Ren’s face--

\--only to jerk back under the sudden wash of incandescence as the search party floodlights found them, the sky suddenly deafening with the roar of engines and the beat of repulsorlifts...

He pulls himself out of the memory, forcing himself to focus on Ferron’s twitching mouth, his amusement at Hux’s cold formality, his unimpeachable good posture. Ren has yet to say a word. It is a fleeting hope, but he may well have been deformed and rendered mute. 

“I am returned to you whole and ready, General,” Ren snarls through his mask, stoppering Hux’s optimism immediately.

“Excellent,” Hux says, bold-faced and cool even though his _knees_ are somehow sweating. He breaks parade rest to gesture with a stiff arm that the party should follow him into the turbolift. Ferron surprises him by dismissing both their entourages with a crisp order and entering the lift with Ren at his side and Hux a belated step behind. Hux grits his teeth, inflamed as he punches the access protocols. It is an obvious dominance manoeuvre and some kriffing insidious chemical working at the base of his brain has made him too slow to anticipate or counter it. He lets his mind touch upon the suppressant stim sheathed in his pocket before swerving towards dubiously safer ground, wary of his company's preternatural abilities.

“Am I to assume that Leader Snoke has charged you with General Ferron’s success in this matter?” he asks Ren as the doors seal shut behind him with a hiss.

“He has,” Ferron says cheerfully. “I’ve been assigned a full audit of the destroyer and her crew.” He doesn’t say that it is Hux who will be weighed and measured, but Hux is practiced at doublespeak, as Ferron knows and intends him to know. “The Supreme Leader has been kind enough to lend me his Knight to facilitate the process.”

Hux eyes the alleged enforcer. Beside Ferron in his handsome uniform, Ren looks like a gruesomely costumed stooge, the edges of his cowl ratty and discolored. Hux doesn’t know how Ferron can stand to be so near him, an unsuppressed alpha. In the confined space Ren smells like an open chemical fire and yet the other general appears unmoved save for the slight flaring of his nostrils.

“Just among us alphas,” Ferron says slyly. “You’ll be pleased to hear that Leader Snoke has approved your co-commander for a heat. Although with the way you run your ship, Armitage, I don’t know how you keep even your janitors from rutting. It’s positively tropical in here.”

He keeps talking but Hux hears the information like white noise, his pulse thudding in his eardrums, sweat beading at his hairline. He stifles the impulse to pull his collar away from his neck, to seek air. _Heat?_ He stares dumbfounded at Ren’s visor. He finds he can’t picture his face at all, whole or cleaved, blank or enraged; if he is assessing Hux in kind behind the mask; if he is flushed, panting...

“The act will complete my training,” Ren says flatly.

Hux tries to clear his throat but only succeeds in swallowing. He had thought he was packing Ren off to be flayed by his master after Starkiller – if he even survived the trip - and instead he has been given areward? His hands ball into fists. Anger flares inside him, tempered by cold disbelief. Hux is about to have his last chance at scraping together a way forward for the Order pried from his fingers, to be cast down into ignominy, and Ren, who shat the bed on Starkiller because he couldn't wait five minutes to kill his father like any sensible son, has been tasked with _getting some strange_?

“You’ll have to forgive my colleague, Lord Ren. Snoke keeps us officers on a tight leash. Jealousy is only natural. It’s practically taboo in the Order to be allowed to heat with an omega.”

Hux feels as though he has unwittingly slipped through a wormhole and into a hellish alternate reality. _Heat? Lord Ren?_ _Puns?_ He wants to throw up. He needs air. Ren’s scent is suffocating in the lift; rocket fuel and sweet rot, and the scoring bitter taste of butterscotch caught on the bottom of the pan. He eyes the lift control panel, the deck numbers scrolling past at a debilitating pace. His face feels like an unstable chemlight about to short out. It can’t just be the lack of climate control. He’s having some sort of nervous reaction, he realizes, legs trembling, ribs tightening. He feels sweat prick under his arms and shivers at the vile sensation of it.

Ren’s vocoder crackles, an intake of breath.

And then, horrifically:

“That scent--”

“You could not have had better timing,” Hux interrupts, his brain lurching for an opportunity, a diversion for the threat of Ren’s attention. “We have an omega aboard.”

“I’m not fucking Dopheld,” Ren says rudely.

“The boy from the hangar?” Ferron asks, removing his cap to scuff a hand through his cropped hair. “The skittish one? I had thought as much. Ah, pity about the suppressants. Though I suppose the blockers don’t hide all the little tells, right Armitage?”

“Yes, of course,” Hux says, trying to rein in his panic. Little tells. He does a quick assessment of Ren and Ferron’s postures: relaxed, non-aggressive. Subtle displays of confidence. Nothing in the immediate space qualifies as a threat. Not for either of them - and not for me, Hux adds, straightening. He thinks of Mitaka’s mannerisms when he is in between doses. Omega traits tend to amplify in the presence of alphas, the greater the alpha pheromone output the greater the corresponding omega reaction, creating a stronger feedback loop. Mitaka is the only omega listed aboard the _Finalizer_ and his reactiveness to Ren, a young, overly virile and vulgarly unsuppressed alpha is...unfortunate. Luckily for the sensibilities of Hux and his crew, the two times that Ren and Mitaka have come into contact with each other during complimentary cycles have resulted in Mitaka getting Force-throttled instead of buggered over a console.

The lift stills and the doors slide open, the staff on the bridge scrambling to look busy at their stations. Thannison is obviously stickybeaking from his seat at the peripheral console, his neck twisting like a curious bird. Hux, like one of Ren’s order of mystics, can almost hear him thinking it:  _are they talking about the ghost?_   The ventilation on the bridge is mercifully still functioning, although at reserve capacity, and Hux feels the tepid wash of air like a cool balm on his cheeks. 

“The omega I’m referring to is not Lieutenant Mitaka,” he says, discretely sucking down air that doesn’t taste like Ren. The knight is waiting with uncharacteristic patience a foot away from him, oddly quiet and seemingly content for Hux and Ferron to steer the conversation around him. The newfound discipline makes Hux uneasy. Perhaps he has been punished for his part (the whole of it) in the cockup after all. 

“Another omega? You have an unregistered on your ship, Armitage?” Ferron sounds mildly scandalized but his eyes are shrewd. 

“No, " Ren says, voice stilted and toneless in the way it is when he is preoccupied with pulling the information out of the aether of other men’s minds. "A Resistance pilot. Here. You found him on the base,” Ren says, then spins on his heel and disappears through the nearest set of blast doors without even an attempt at formality, headed in the direction of the interrogation rooms no doubt.

Ferron raises an eyebrow at Hux.

“We retrieved a downed member of their attack force during the event,” Hux explains. “He began presenting after the first week without access to medication. I recused myself from his questioning of course - the ethical implications - but with Ren’s _abilities_ perhaps we can get some answers from him.”

“Or some other utility,” Ferron says slickly.

Hux sniffs, tweaking his stance subtly to better emulate the other general. “That’s Ren’s business. I don’t pretend to be interested in what my co-commander sticks his knot into.”

Ferron laughs. “Armitage,” he says, leaning forward and placing a hand on his shoulder, his thumb finding some point on Hux’s neck that makes his whole body ripple with fearful pleasure, his cock firming up in his pants at the same time as the nerves in his legs prick with the urge to flee. He stares blankly past Ferron’s ear, concentrating on not sighing, on not leaning in or collapsing to his knees. Ferron whispers into Hux’s ear: “The knot comes after, Princess.”

The first secret Ren cannot know is this:

The last time Hux saw Ferron, he was being bred.


	2. Hot from hell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aboard the _Finalizer_ , things other than the air-conditioning begin to fall apart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Mind the tags and consult the endnote for trigger warnings! This one's a bit dark.

During his tour of the ship Ferron employs the usual plethora of needling tactics to assert his control: waiting expectantly for Hux to input his own access codes for each waypoint and console as if Hux is his devoted ensign; creating silences for Hux to fill with explanations that sound increasingly like excuses; giving no indication as to how long he plans to drag Hux around his own ship or with what measure he intends to determine her battle readiness, so that Hux is forced to scrape and endear himself, to feel out the precursors for his approval.

It doesn’t come as easy to him as it once did, the scraping; an iteration of self he destroyed with the enjoyable finality of destroying flimsi over a naked flame once he had his stripes. But as a cadet he had known the perfect questions to ask to pique any ego, how to temper his intelligence with rawness, how to color his ambition with curiosity. Even instructors who were indifferent to him could be lured in with the right display of inquisitiveness or the opportunity for debate.

Hux's survival - his career - is dependent on a favorable report from Ferron. But something in him bucks at the idea of acquiescing to even the most civil of the alpha's requests. Perhaps it is because they had the same teacher - although Hux’s lessons in the art of command were given in private and with burning shame, designed to mask and compensate, and Ferron’s were given as an afterthought, a formality.

Hux sneaks a sour glance at his old schoolmate. Watching him work is like watching one of his father’s wet dreams play out in real life. The interloper general has Hux’s crew eating out of the palm of his hand inside of an hour, even reliable killjoy Edrison Peavey warming to him. Hux could usually trust the older members of his crew to be loyal. Even if they loathe him for his youth and his unconventional decision-making they respect his commission, and they respect his training. But Ferron has the same commission, and he wears the stripes well. And he comes from better stock. Hux scowls as the man chums it up with his senior staff, his golden hair catching all the light in the room. Dissent has a very specific smell, and since Hux was forced to abandon his crew on Starkiller the _Finalizer_ has been rife with it; a quiet, noxious sort of resentment growing in the ranks, manifest in this _damned_ _ghost_. If Ferron sniffs it out…

He catches himself rubbing his hand over the fine scars on the back of his neck where Ferron had touched him. He can still feel it: Ferron’s thumb digging into the tendon between neck and shoulder with firm intent, a threat and a promise of ownership, a touch that turns his spine soft and sets the fast-twitch muscles of his legs to trembling. It’s a way of being handled that Hux might have yearned for in another life, if he were a man who enjoyed plating up his vulnerabilities for consumption, or giving over his autonomy. But even without his biological handicap he is not that way inclined. He once famously stared down a junior officer for presuming to bring him a cup of caf during a particularly long and gruelling stint on the bridge. No. Hux’s vulnerabilities are between him and his therapist. And his therapist is a 50-year old bottle of Tevraki. 

He thinks about the stim in his pocket, fantasizes about injecting it discretely through the leg of his pants. He can’t seem to break out of this spell of uncharacteristic passiveness that has endured since Ferron stepped out of the shuttle. Every time his anger coalesces to the point of inspiration - the barest taste of his usual opportunistic wit - Ferron subdues him; a comradely hand hovering at his elbow, an appraising glance, the soft authority of his voice and its hypnotic calm cadence. These are techniques which Brendol could not teach him and which Hux cannot learn, and Ferron applies them mercilessly until Hux is boxed in and sweating. It shouldn't work, shouldn't be able to affect him whilst on his medication.

 _Something is wrong_ , a little voice whispers.  

An old memory gums up his throat like bile and Hux swallows it down. But still Ferron’s words burn in his brain. 

 _The knot comes after_.

Stupid. So stupid to have opened his mouth without thinking, to have taken the bait. He’s spent too long with only Ren as his greatest intellectual challenge – a man who once played with the up-down pneumatics on his chair for a full 40-minute briefing.

His senses prickle and he looks up to find Ferron watching him from across the reactor plant, one of Hux’s less-melted engineers dithering on happily about repairs, ignorant to the carnal gleam of the general’s eyes. No one ever caught him at it back then either, Hux remembers...

He straightens into his parade rest, gripping hard at his wrist behind his back to stop his blush, the tightening of his throat. Ferron starts to smile – (Hux’s heart stutters) – but it is his politician’s smile, glossy and false, directed at the plant staff, congratulating them on their quick work.

A bead of sweat loosens between his shoulder blades and slips down his back.

When Hux finally does manage to escape the procession, dumping Ferron and his cohort of auditors and financiers in the questionable hands of the nearest unoccupied biped, his tunic is glued to his skin with sweat, and his nerves are shot all to hell. The stim slides around in his pocket, taunting him with a quick solution to his discomfort as he stalks away. 

“Sir,” TK-4422 says sweatily from where she is trailing behind him in the slipstream of air generated in his wake, datapad in hand. “Sir, the medbay has confirmed all presenting betas but one reporting for the booster, as per your orders.”

“Good,” Hux grunts, barely paying attention, busy trying to put as many doors as possible between him and the other general.

“Sir,” she pipes up again, following him onto a travelator. He eyeballs her until she realizes her faux pas and hops off, struggling to keep pace with him as he travelates. Under the weight of his exhaustion he feels a small swell of happiness. He's well are there's a betting pool on whether his lack of greatcoat corresponds with his general mood and friendliness, but if he’s being honest with himself he prefers being a bastard 100 percent of the time, and the amount of lower ranked staff who have felt comfortable enough to approach him in the past few days since the heating malfunction has been atrocious for his ego. He would rather don the thick gaberwool and sweat himself to death than have one of his crew try to invite him to group therapy again. “About the, uh, ghost, sir?” TK-4422 pants beside him, her plasti-plate rattling as she jogs to keep up. “You told me to keep you updated?”

He sneers to himself. “The ghost is a metaphor.”

“What was that, sir?”

“Nothing," Hux sighs. "Where was it this time?”

“Petty Officer Sun-Li says he encountered it in the officer’s barracks. He said it stole his sandwich, sir.”  

He takes a slow breath in through his nostrils. “What?”

“His sandwich, sir. His lunch.”

Hux hisses, “I know what--” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Have they reviewed the barracks' camera footage?”

“Yes, sir. It's inconclusive. I’ve forwarded it to your inbox.”

“Perfect,” Hux grumbles, reaching the end of the travelator and stepping off gracefully. “I’ll look at it later."

The trooper catches up with him, slowing to a brisk walk. "Oh!" she wheezes, holding out the flashing datapad for him to see. "You have a new unread communique, sir."

Hux waves her off, punching in the access code for his and Ren's shared floor. "Just read it to me."

The door shrieks as it opens, regularly abused by one of its occupants. Hux makes a mental note to have it fixed. Again. 

"K dot R" TK-4422 reads. Hux suppresses an eye roll. "'I know you have it.'"

Hux stops cold. Fear like a clammy hand grabs him by the back of his neck and _shakes_ him.

 _I know you have it_. 

The door pings impatiently, sliding out of its brace and butting up against his hip. It shrieks again as it retreats, as loud as a scream. The trooper girl is looking at him, waiting for a response. 

Hux clears his throat, stepping out of the doorway. "Where is Ren now?” 

"Lord Ren, sir?"

Hux refrains from hissing at her again. "Why not. Yes, where's _Lord_ Ren?"

The trooper consults her datapad. "He's signed in to Interrogation Chamber One, sir." She means she has a visual of him. Ren would never use the code cylinders Hux gave him to actually sign in anywhere. The trooper squints at the footage in her hand. "He's... _oh._ " Her face which was previously beet red blanches suddenly. She tucks the datapad behind her back, concealing the move with an unacceptably ornate salute. 

Then she is turning and marching, the door sealing shut between them. And Hux is finally, blessedly, alone. 

 

In the darkness of his private quarters he stabs the stim into his thigh and lets gravity crush him.  

He runs a hand over his burning face, testing his jaw. His mouth is full of spit, sweet and viscous. There is a phantom itch under his skin – his throat, the palm of his hands - that he wants to claw out, not to soothe but to aggravate, to bring to the surface. The stim is junk, mostly caf, but it clears away some of the mental fog, allows him to stop feeling that grip, the thumb, pressing into his neck, the suffocating weight of Ferron's eyes... 

Hux lets out a shuddering sigh of relief and gives himself a moment to feel every point of discomfort within his uniform: the itching claustrophobia of his high collar and the bite of his jackboots; the sweat gone tacky under his arms and in the small of his back; the ragged breath hitched tight under his ribs since the _Reaper!_ appeared - and then, like a droid first learning to animate, he begins to move. 

Practiced and controlled he shucks out of his tunic, unstraps his shoulder padding and stows it in his wardrobe, peels out of his boots and breeches ignoring the soggy weight of the sweat-soaked fabric – and tries to imagine he is in the cool quiet of his private courtyard on the base instead of in a barely flight-sound hotbox catapulting towards his reckoning. 

He can smell the fresh phero-seal on his door which means the droids will have also serviced Ren’s quarters by now, which is fortunate – Hux breathes a sigh of relief – seeing as he spent an inordinate amount of time in there post-Starkiller rubbing off on all of his furniture.

He shudders to think about it. A moment of weakness at the end of a long spiral of weak moments since the death of his passion project. He’d been chasing that smell, sick with it, exhausted and frightened, tonguing Ren’s blood out from under his fingernails and rolling around in his bedclothes like a deranged kitten. That was how he’d realized it - that in the turbulence and confusion since Jakku, the escape of the Resistance pilot (Ren’s fault, somehow), the defective trooper (Phasma’s fault) – he’d lapsed, missed his monthly booster shot.

This moment of epiphany had occurred to him as he was transporting one of Ren’s pillows to his own room for safekeeping.

He’d almost blown a circuit. For 20 years he’d maintained a strict schedule of suppressants without fault, regular to the point of mundanity, like brushing his teeth. There was no plan of action for a missed dose, just a small stash of black market stims which he had promptly abused, now miserably depleted.

His eyes skitter over the locked desk drawer.

_I know you have it._

_Impossible,_ Hux thinks. _Impossible for him to know._

He shakes his head to clear it as he enters his fresher, avoiding the white and red smear in the deactivated mirror. With any luck his idiot co-commander will be recalled to the Supreme Leader soon and none-the-wiser, and then all Hux has to do is find a way to loofah the shameful memory right out of his brain.

He mutters agreeably to himself as he clambers into the sonic. The vibrations take care of the worst of the salt and grime but the warm stillness is sensationally comparable to standing inside a microwave, which makes him think of his thermal oscillator, which makes him maudlin, so he punches through the ablution settings as quickly as he can, ignoring his half-hard cock. He grimaces as the cloying fug of pheromones begins to loosen and dissipate – an unpleasant cocktail of Ren and Ferron’s simmering aggression and Mitaka’s tickling brio, reaching for his favorite shampoo so that he can suds the last of the smell off him--

 

Hux woke to a deep feeling of wrongness, the back of his head soft and wet, the sting of chemicals in his nose and the back of his throat. The ceiling resolved into focus first, blinding white, crowded with spots of wavering blackness, fluorescent lights shuddering; then the bare walls, tiles, the academy doctor and...his father. Hux blinked as the pair loomed in and out of focus. Brendol was pacing, boots squeaking on the floor, hair and shoulders dark with rain, and the doctor was out of her chair trying to placate him. Their voices sounded strange, tinny, like he was listening to a radio conversation out of frequency, impossibly distant.

“I’ve performed a full serum screen, Commandant,” the doctor was saying, hushed and urgent. “We won’t know the results of the biopsy until tomorrow, but he already has twelve of the twenty markers. And his physiology is consistent with--”

“An anomaly. Check the blood work again,” Brendol growled, jabbing an accusatory finger in Hux’s direction. “The instructors assured me he was top of his class--”

“Physical performance is no guarantee of--”

“--that he displayed outstanding leadership qualities--”

“Sir, I’ve documented several early indicators that he’s--”

“Enough!” Brendol barked and the sound boomed and echoed with sudden volume around the sterile med bay. The doctor slumped back into her chair, the monitors on her desk lighting up responsively behind the halo of her frizzy, dark hair. Hux shut his eyes against the sudden pulse of holo-blue.

A soft smart knock came at the door – an enquiry from the commandant’s valet or ensign, brought by the noise. Brendol ignored it, his leather gloves fisted and creaking in a way that made Hux’s neck tense. He tested his tongue in his mouth, wanting to speak, to ask who they were talking about, but found himself choking weakly instead on a mouthful of foamy drool.

“There’s been an error,” his father continued more calmly. “I expect this incident to be expunged from his records.” He scooped up his cap, punching it into shape - an old habit indicating he was about to leave. Hux swallowed furiously, once, twice, fingers twitching - but the moment was gone, the room expanding, stretching outward like taffy, like stars pulled alongside a ship jumping into hyperspace; his father and the doctor sliding away from him as they continued their conversation, unnoticing. “He has a transplant – an _alpha_ transplant. Contact me when he starts presenting.”

“He already has,” the doctor said bluntly.

The words froze the commandant in place like an incantation, one hand poised over the door panel.

The doctor gestured for him to sit. “He has started presenting, sir,” she said again, voice gentling as Brendol sunk into the offered chair. “One of the other cadets smelled it on him during field drills – an unregistered beta. The instructors broke it up before anything untoward could happen.”

“Untoward,” Brendol said flatly. 

“His uniform was intact but it’s apparent from the bite pattern that he was trying to…” the doctor paused, choosing her words carefully, “engage.”

Hux frowned _. Untoward_. The word washed over and through him and echoed around his brain without meaning. _Untowarduntowarduntoward_. His arm and throat itched but the rest of his body felt gelid and cold. He craned his neck to look down at his body and realized with numb interest that there were several IV tubes attached to him. 

“He’s fourteen, for kriff’s sake! How is he presenting already?”

“Early presentation is another indicator, sir,” the doctor said. “They mature faster – a biological imperative.”

Brendol swore again, lurching out of his chair and resuming his uneasy pacing. The doctor politely turned away to tap at her monitor while he seethed.

“Can you fix him?” Brendol asked after a while, teeth gritted.

“He was hit over the back of the head with a practice blaster,” the doctor said. “A stunning maneuver, I believe. I was able to apply bacta in time. I’m confident there won’t be any lasting damage.”

“Lasting damage,” Brendol muttered angrily, his knuckles tightening over the brim of his cap. “He’s pfassking useless! Worse than useless! No, I meant” – he waved vaguely at the cot where Hux was lying, shrinking inside his own skin – “with what’s happening to him. Can it be treated?”

The doctor nodded. “I’m giving him a fortified dose of suppressants now. It’s too late to reverse his heat, but it will make him more comfortable, less lucid.”

 _Heat_. The word stroked over him and then _pinched_. Fear like dirty fingernails began to scrape at the edges of his awareness, picking at a truth. He could taste, suddenly, the thick saliva in his mouth, and it was too sweet. 

“And what about after?” Brendol growled, dissatisfied. “Next time.”

“There is medication he can take to regulate his hormone cycle and minimize the effects,” the doctor said. Brendol spun away with a huff. She continued to watched him, considering. She looked down at the stylus in her hand and then put it aside, licked her lips: “Theoretically, sir,” she said tentatively. “With the right medication, there needn’t be a next time.”

Brendol stopped his pacing. “Talk,” he said after a tense beat.

The doctor licked her lips again. “It’s possible, with a slightly more _aggressive_ suppressant regimen, to completely stop the hormone and pheromone processes. To mask his presentation.” 

“He wouldn’t be symptomatic?”

“It’s not a disease – but essentially, yes, he would be asymptomatic. Undetectable even. On paper.” She met the commandant’s stare with shrewd intent.

“On paper,” Brendol said finally, voice low.

The doctor nodded. “There are behavioral aspects, as you know: posturing, speaking patterns. He would need to maintain a strict physical routine. But with the right training, early, and absent any stressors--”

“Stressors?”

“Fatigue, illness, heat,” the doctor explained. “The presence of a sexually mature alpha. Anything that could spike a reciprocal pheromone response.”

Brendol scrubbed a hand over his face, the idea gaining traction. “Has anyone notified the GVA of his status?”

“Not yet, sir.” She inclined her head at the monitors. “According to my most recent report, your son is expected to present alpha within the next five years.”

 _Wait!_ Hux was trying to say, the words as light and fragile as bubbles, swelling in his throat. His limbs fizzed and shook as he strained.  _Please. Please, there’s been a mistake._   _I **am** an alpha – _ but the words were bursting on his leaden tongue, and neither of them paid him any notice.

“What about the other boy - the beta?”

“Dealt with, sir. Scrubbed. He was one of the orphans so there won’t be follow up.”

“And the other witnesses?”

“There were two instructors and four cadets on the field,” the doctor said. “They’ve been briefed that it was a normal attack: the pair were competitive. As far as anyone outside of this room is aware your son is being treated for a head injury.”

Brendol grunted his approval. “What about the other indicators – the ones you documented?”

“Nothing definitive, sir,” the doctor said. “And nothing that needs to remain on his record. He demonstrates an aptitude for strategic persuasion, reacts positively to praise-based incentives. He ingratiates himself with the older cadets, and his instructors.”

“Is he homosexual?” Brendol strung the word out with distaste.

The doctor’s lips pursed. Hux’s eyes snagged on the lines of her mouth leaping into sharp relief and then blurring. “There’s no way of telling, sir. But as your son is not a genetic vestigial, it’s highly unlikely he will develop the necessary reproductive physiology for a male partner.” Then with more tact: “Presentation is not a guarantee of proclivity, sir. Your son may yet continue your name, if that is your concern.”

Brendol looked taken aback. “There are female alphas?”

“Of course. But sir, alphas – male and female - are almost exclusively bloodline legacies, from Inner Rim families. If your son doesn’t develop any advantageous breeding characteristics he will not be a suitable match for one.”

Brendol growled. “So you’re saying even as a bargaining piece he’s useless.”

“Not...necessarily, sir,” the doctor said.

The commandant leveled a warning look at her. She fidgeted under his gaze, mulling over the right words. “Sir…” She smoothed her hands over her lap and took a resolving breath. “Are you aware that my son is a registered omega?”

“What of it?”

Emboldened, she pushed on. “Suppressants are strictly regulated by the Galactic Association. The drugs being administered to your son now are from the Academy’s academic reserves – for research purposes. Sir, I can explain away their use this time, but your son will need regular access to suppressants for the rest of his adult life. And medical supervision. I can augment the supply of my son’s suppressants, conceal their application” - her eyes flickered up, locking with the commandant’s - “but it will be necessary for my son to be within proximity to Cadet Hux. Permanently. After the Academy.”

“Ah,” Brendol said after a beat. “That would require a commission.”

“Yes,” the doctor said carefully. “Nothing too grand, sir. Just something that would keep him out of the action. And close to your son, of course.”

“Of course. And yourself?”

She swallowed. “A promotion perhaps? I will need to administer the boosters in person, frequently. I’m sure you appreciate that due to the sensitive nature of the matter I won’t be able to prepare any contingency for him if…if I was to miss an appointment. 

Brendol’s mouth twitched into the barest of smirks at the threat. He held out his cap clasped in his palm, a conciliatory gesture. “Very well, _Doctor_. Now tell me, what exactly is it that you think my bastard might be useful for?”

The doctor huffed out a relieved breath, relaxing back into her chair. “Your ensign waiting outside. He’s a non-presenting alpha, correct?”

Brendol stiffened. “He’s seventeen,” he said tersely. “I’m confident he’ll present soon.”

“What if I told you he could present sooner? Manifest alpha traits sooner?”

Brendol’s eyes narrowed. “You have my attention.”

“By rights this incident never should have happened,” the doctor said. “We screen for vestigials, and they’re rare – especially out here. For the beta who attacked your son to slip through… Well, I won’t know until I study the tissue sample, but he must have been very weak. _Sub_ non-presenting.”

“Get to the point.”

The doctor sniffed. “Sir, it’s possible - and this is just my theory – but it’s possible that the beta who attacked your son only developed traits as a response to an extremely strong stimulus, namely, your son’s prolonged untreated condition.”

Brendol frowned. “Prolonged?”

“Yes, sir. There are indications your son was trying to self-manage his condition for several days prior to the incident.”

“He _knew_?”

The doctor shook her head. “Not necessarily. The initial symptoms can be mild. He probably thought he had a fever. The service droids reported that he switched to cold sanisteams two days ago; and that he doubled his red meat consumption in the past week.”

“And that exacerbated things?”

The doctor shrugged. “There’s very little in the way of solid answers here, Commandant. The fact that your son has a transplant rather than a genetic predisposition for the traits complicates things. And, as I understand it, he has some sort of mark from the donor wolf.”

“A mark of war,” Brendol spat. “The old sith charlatan promised me greatness, not some mincing--”

“Yes, well,” the doctor cut in. “That may still eventuate. But in the meantime, what I can say is this: your son’s heat accelerated the maturation process of an extremely latent beta. It may even have amplified his traits. The savagery of the attack, the neck biting behavior - these are alpha behaviors.”

“And that’s useful to me how?”

The doctor took a sharp, excited breath. “Sir, I believe that the results could be replicated, if he were to resume his heat. With your ensign.”

“ _Nnn_ \--” Hux wheezed, panic bubbling up inside him and overflowing. _A mistake! There has been a mistake!_ A terrible quiet noise was coming out of him like a punctured tire. His elbows scraped against the steri-sheet as he tried to sit up. Brendol glanced over at the noise, his ruddy face alight with possibility, eyes tracing over his limp, shivering form and assessing its value with cool pragmatism. The doctor followed his gaze and slipping out of her chair, clucking worriedly as she drew near to fiddle with one of his IVs.

“Don’t move, cadet,” she said, her voice booming up close. Hux felt it in his eyeballs. The liquid feeling was spreading over him again, his muscles unspooling, turning heavy. “You have a concussion.” She pressed him back against the cot and kept pressing until he was sinking down, down through the mattress, and down and down and away...

“Easy,” she said, smoothing back his hair. “Easy. It’s just a sedative.” But he was already gone; a tiny bug called Hux.

His father was looking down at him, gigantic, stretching towards the ceiling. He was talking again but the words were underwater and backwards, bouncing off of each other, raining down on Hux like boulders. 

“There won’t be any permanent damage?”

“Not physically. So long as your ensign keeps his aggression in check.”

A scoff. “I’ll get him now. Take him off the suppressant.”

The doctor nodded. “He’ll struggle.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Brendol said. “Ferron is stronger.”

 

Hux blinks awake in the sonic, his legs folded under him awkwardly and the tiles slick with spilled soap. He feels around for the bottle and rights it before staggering to his feet, ungainly and sore. He props himself against the screen and breathes as the sonic hums around him, the memory receding like a slow tide.  _Right_ , he thinks absently. Nothing broken. Nothing bleeding. A clod of shampoo lather slip-strokes down over his cheek like a caress and he swats it away, nausea spiking, reaching out clumsily for the off switch. 

He stumbles out of the sonic, scrubbing the last of the residue off his skin with a towel. His hair will set funny but he deprioritizes it as he rifles through the contents of his vanity, fumbling out the small standard medkit. It takes three tries to peel the wrapper off the single-use thermometer and his hands are shaking again by the time he gets it in his mouth. He taps the mirror on, sweeping aside his scrolling affirmations ( _YOU ARE IN CONT--_ ) and glares at his reflection mistrustfully. He lifts his chin, strokes his fingers over his slightly stubbled neck, snarls his lip up and looks at his teeth, not sure what he’s supposed to be looking for. He leans closer, prying at the thin skin around his left eye. It’s slightly bloodshot but so is his other eye, brows and eyelashes pale and feathery in the harsh light. No sith orange. He leans back, considering. Flushed cheeks and dilated pupils. Nothing. Maybe.

 _But what if it is?_  A small voice whispers. _The stims aren't working._ _What if it's happening again?_

_What if it's just a fever?_

A flash of Mitaka in the hangar: mouth open, pink. Ripe. Eyes shining hungrily.

_What if it's more?_

He turns the mirror off, staring at the amorphous pale blur on the dark surface. He's so still for so long that the sensor light cuts out and leaves him standing there in the wedge of dim light extending in from his room, sucking at the thermometer and trying not to think. 

The room is just as warm as he left it when he finally exits the fresher and his tunic is still crusty with sweat, clinging to his damp skin as he stuffs his arms through the sleeves. He consults his comm and makes note of the time: gamma shift, skeleton crew, Lieutenant Rodinon on the bridge. And somewhere, probably, Ren, interrogating or torturing or forcibly dating the Resistance captive.

Hux cinches his belt shut and sweeps his wet hair under his cap. Unable to procrastinate any longer he withdraws the thermometer, holding it up to the light, squinting at the tiny blinking screen:

_E-R-R-O-R_

He bites his lip. 

 _There’s been an error_.

“Well. It could just mean the device is faulty,” he says. Then he sighs and sags down onto the edge of his bed. “I know I promised to stop speaking to you, but I think I might be having some sort of…episode, and I find myself in need of perspective. Should I” – he swallows – “pay a visit to the medbay?”

Millicent yowls deafeningly, nudging her food bowl towards him.

“Fine,” Hux breathes, defeated. _Fine_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: This chapter is called "Hot from hell" because it is a Hot Mess. 
> 
> Warnings for underage sexual assault: Hux is fourteen and on drugs (high and paralyzed) and his father and a doctor discuss and are complicit with him being raped. The rape is implied/non-explicit and non-graphic but still distressing.


	3. The ruins of the noblest man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In the small hours of the night, Hux confronts his ghosts.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Fair warning, my Canady crush comes out in a big way in this one.

Hux waits a full minute, his eyes on the wobbling corridor feed, ears pricked for the telltale shriek of the door heralding his maniac co-commander before slipping out onto the landing, headed for the medbay. He would feel sheepish about it were it not for the fact that he has access to a closed feed in Ren’s quarters and has on occasion caught him doing the exact same thing.

During gamma shift the ship runs on reserve power, the bulk of her crew sleeping, and in the soft red light Hux moves through the ship like a phantom and tries not to jump at shadows. His blade is strapped comfortingly to his forearm under his sleeve. He hasn’t tested its efficacy against ghosts, but it will work on flesh and blood alphas.

The medbay is small, claustrophobic graphite-black durasteel cluttered with expensive-looking machines. It is designed for private consultations and check ups, not large-scale triage. Two troopers are idling in the entranceway when Hux arrives, one clutching his limp arm.

“Out,” he says firmly. There’s no need for follow up. They disappear at a satisfying scramble. Doctor Mitaka peaks her head over the top of her monitor at the noise, face lit up and hollowed with the ghoulish blue light of her screen.

“General? I wasn’t aware we had an appointment.”

Hux raises an unimpressed eyebrow and she jolts out of her seat, decorum catching up with surprise. The door seals shut with a hiss as she ushers him in.

“Please, take a seat.” She gestures at the narrow med cot with its cocked open diagnostic dome. He’s caught her between patients and the anxious corners of his mind snag on the used gloves hanging over the lip of the wastebasket, the cup of milky caf gone cold and congealed on her desk - no coaster. There’s a soiled hand towel on the steri-sheet and he gingerly pushes it aside so that he can sit. “How can we be of service, General?” the doctor asks carefully, noting his discomfort.

 _We_. Hux eyes the long-limbed med droid behind her, its gears whirring as it sanitizes a tray of delicate instruments. The glossy red plate of its exterior reminds him of the Supreme Leader’s omnipresent personal guard. The thing has no approximation of a face, just a rather menacingly large camera lens, which Hux feels is an oversight in a droid designed to engender trust and calm in its patients.

“Med-X has a manual wipe function, sir,” Doctor Mitaka says, following his gaze. She leans over and flicks open a hinged plate at its midsection, revealing a panel for override codes. She punches in a command and the lens winks shut. “It won’t be recording any of your data during this session, if that’s your concern.”

Hux gives her a satisfied nod. He clears his throat and does another quick scan of the room before saying quietly, “I need another booster.”

“Sir,” she says, tone patient. “The one I gave you after your victory over the Hosnian System should be effective through to--”

“It’s insufficient,” Hux says, cutting her off. “I have reason to believe I am…symptomatic.”

Her eyes widen. “I see,” she says, instead of giving her usual argument about whether or not the condition threatening to scupper Hux’s career and turn him into a frothing, cock-eyed _libertine_ should be categorized as a disease. She closes the panel on the med droid and wheels closer, snapping on a fresh pair of gloves. “Let’s take a look then shall we.”

He holds still while she feels his neck, fingers probing at his lymph nodes. Even that light clinical touch feels unbearable. The doctor frowns, fingers pausing. “You’re a little swollen.” She murmurs a string of shorthand instructions at the droid, which disappears obediently around a screen. Hux tracks it with open suspicion until she tilts his head away and up, shining her penlight in his eyes, thumb pressed under each brow in turn. He opens his mouth, anticipating that she will check his teeth next, but she just pats his cheek knowingly before drawing away, which makes him feel the fool for having examined them himself earlier.

She sits back, grabbing up a datapad and stylus. “Have you noticed any abnormal changes in temperature?”

Hux levels her with a bland stare, giving her a moment to fully appreciate the sublimely par-boiled quality of his complexion.

“Of course,” she says, making a note in his file. “Any vomiting? Stomach pains?”

“No.”

She makes another note. “How has your sleep been?”

“I think if you consult my _log_ ,” Hux says defensively, “you will see that I meet the requisite five hours per cycle.”

“And how would you describe the quality of that sleep?” she asks, unfazed.

Hux glares at her. “Satisfactory.” He doesn’t mention that every time he closes his eyes he sees Starkiller – his glorious weapon, her seams bursting, cracking open, molten gold; the tang of plasma and snow dissolving on his tongue; hot blood blossoming under his hands, soaking through his gloves.

“What about your eating? The last time we spoke you agreed to a three-meal plan. Are you getting enough red meat?” Hux sniffs. “Sir, as we’ve discussed at length, your body requires an above average amount of protein if you are to maintain--”

“I take supplements,” he snaps impatiently. “Just ask me the kriffing question.”

“Very well, sir,” she says wearily, accustomed to his hostility. She puts the datapad down on her lap. “Have you reason to believe that you are experiencing symptoms of a heat?”

Primary symptoms of a heat: discomfort, restlessness, increased sensitivity to dominant behavior. He opens his mouth to confirm but finds himself looking at his hands instead. He’s clutching the small towel - wasn’t even aware of having grabbed it. But now that he has he can’t seem to give it up, twisting it over and over. The doctor sees that he isn’t going to speak and picks her datapad back up.

“Prolonged arousal?”

His voice is weak. “Yes.”

“Nocturnal emissions?”

He rubs the edge of the towel between two fingers. It smells soft, musky-sweet – like a sleep shirt warm from bed; vaguely comforting. He nods.

“Any rutting behavior?”

Hux swallows, staring at the wall over her shoulder.

“All right, sir,” she says gently. “Lie back, please. Cap and jacket off.”

Hux shuffles back stiffly on the cot, boots catching on the fine tissue of the steri-sheet as he wiggles into place. The skin on his bare arms prickles. He tries not to think of the long line of officers and troopers who have lain here immediately before him, waiting for their own shots, sweating. He stares at the featureless white ceiling and relaxes his arms at his sides as the doctor closes the dome over his upper half.

“Have you been taking stimulants?” she asks, frowning pensively at the glowing red lines wiggling over the convex surface.

“Caf. A few stims.”

She clucks her tongue. “Second-rate product from our Guavian friend no doubt. The stims are only good for temporary relief. They won’t slow down your hormone response.” She props the lid up. “I need to look at your mate scar. Turn over on your belly.”

Hux gives her a salty look as he twists around, reminding her that he doesn’t like it being referred to as that, but more importantly, that he’s not fourteen anymore, or high out of his skull, that he can overpower her and leave any time he wants. He breathes into the steri-sheet, hyperaware of her moving over him, pulling his cotton undershirt away from the site of the old bite wound. Kerrogin. Lousy bookworm. Hux had been running before he knew what he was running from. He’d have never put money on the little swot being so fast. The doctor scrapes up the damp hair at the back of his neck and circles the marks with a finger. Hux feels a twitch-response course down his body, guts trembling, face breaking out in a sweat. He gasps into the sheet.

“Easy,” she says, trying to soothe him.

He flinches so hard the cot rattles.

“Alright, you can sit up now,” she says, averting her eyes and stripping off her gloves while Hux props himself up on shaky limbs. The droid wheels back into the room, a disposable cup of something pale and effervescent on its tray alongside a menacing-looking hypo. Hux fiddles with the corner of the little towel, waiting for his pulse to slow.

“I’m going to give you another booster,” she says, passing him the cup. “That will stop the fever, and the hypersalivation.” She swabs his bicep in preparation for the hypo while he downs the chalky drink, wincing.

The sting of the syringe is the first pure thing he’s felt in weeks. It spills over him like cool water, knocks the worst of the itch out of his bones. All the smells in the room disentangle and mute, the tense set of his shoulders loosening as his brain resumes the work of categorizing and discarding them. The smells of the room: old coffee, alcohol from the swab still smarting in his nostrils, ammonia salts. The doctor: starch and nerves, menthol gum, the faint oil of her hair. And finally, _finally_ , the wobbly feeling in his throat: the plaintive urge to whine, the docile flex of his spine and the nervous skittering of his heart – ebbs; myriad submissive impulses diffusing out of his body on a sigh until all that’s left is Armitage Hux; the general.

Beautiful clear anger comes back to him, and assuredness, and drive. He doesn’t quite feel as he felt that day on the podium, like he could barely contain his conviction, his voice splitting and multiplying with the force of his joy, his body shaking apart with righteous ecstasy as the first of the trees vaporized. This feeling is less, even, than the moments before the rally, in the wings, body singing with readiness, his heart beating with the measured stomp of the legion, the edges of his greatcoat clipping each adherent in turn as he ascended: Canady, Opan, Rodinon, Datoo. Ren had soured it slightly. _“He’s not here, sir,”_ one of his men had whispered. _“He said to give you this.”_ This: a small tube of lotion, sunscreen. Ren’s lousy republican sense of humor. No, this feeling is quieter, safer; not quite himself - but he does feel like he could take a shit on the Galactic Concordance, which is always a good bellwether of his mental equilibrium.

“Sir,” the doctor says, pulling him out of his thoughts, her thumb still hard over the point of injection. “We need to start you on fortified suppressants immediately.”

“What about the booster?” 

She shakes her head. “The booster I gave you after you missed your scheduled dose was a concentrated form of the drug. I’ve been developing it... for my son.” She has the poor manners to look troubled. As if he should care about Dopheld dragging his scrawny ass all over Hux’s ship looking to get tupped. Hux has to contend every day with the misguided lieutenant practically gift-wrapping himself for Hux’s attention. Although, Ren’s predictably ineloquent response to Dopheld’s overtures has left the man with something of a stutter, so perhaps he can understand the doctor’s preference not to see her son bounced around the _Finalizer_ like a Onderonian borgleball. “In any case,” the doctor says, remembering herself, “it should have treated your primary symptoms and stopped the cycle two weeks ago”

“But it hasn’t.”

“No,” she says, eyes foul with pity. “In simple terms, your condition has snowballed. My guess is the effectiveness of the booster was mitigated by environmental stressors. Perhaps the issue with the ventilation, the, uh, excitement on the base.” _Having to haul 90 kilos of cowl-wearing failure onto a rescue shuttle_ , Hux thinks acidly. The doctor continues: “The only way to treat it now and prevent you from going into a full heat is to administer a large dose of suppressants and a sedative via infusion. I can arrange to do it here, and off the books, but you will need to sequester yourself for a cycle.”

Hux gives her an ugly smile. “I’m afraid that’s not possible. My ship and her crew are currently under audit. My absence for any amount of time will be noted.”

“Ah,” she says slowly. “Well. There is one other thing we can try.”

“I strongly advise you that if you are about to tell me to ‘ride it out’,” he says dangerously, “You do not.”

“I’ve seen it done with some success,” she insists. “If we keep your temperature down, limit your exposure to alph—other pheromones, keep you away from sources of stress…”

Hux could almost laugh. Sources of stress. “You may be aware, Doctor. That my esteemed co-commander has returned.”

“Yes, sir,” she says. Her eyes fall to the towel clenched in his fist. “I know.”

Hux frowns, looking down. He turns the damp fabric over in his hands. A musky-sweet smell: warm praline, smoky incense caught on skin, familiar, like--

“Doctor,” he says, an idea swelling inside him, dread mounting. “ _Who was your last patient_?”

She visibly gulps. “I’m afraid doctor-patient privilege--”

Hux snarls. “Has Kylo Ren been here?”

“He reported for a routine physical, sir,” she says, eyes downcast. “The Supreme Leader is monitoring his condition. I’m really not permitted to say more.”

Hux blows a gasket. Because he is a general of the First Order he blows it internally, but it blows.

 _Ren!_ Ren, in here, sitting here, _dripping_. Rubbing his filthy pheromones all over the cot. _Touching_ everything.

He can’t stand it. His teeth are clenched so hard he can hear his jaw creaking. The little towel is rending in his hands.

For years he has worked across from the other man and never once considered his being an alpha as a threat. Yes, the knight has a certain heavy-footed élan that sends lesser men scuttling out of his way, but Hux has always attributed that to Ren’s reputation as a Force-user and certifiable fruitcake, not because the man has a fine-honed biological instinct for intimidation. But in any case, Hux has never had much cause to fear Kylo Ren’s particular brand of attention even being directed at him, let alone being effective against him. Their interactions to date have been pleasantly infrequent and determinedly impersonal on both sides, buffered by Snoke’s supervision and the weight of their separate assignments. They barely even speak, preferring to communicate through proxies to minimize the chance of a confrontation or of coming within smelling distance of each other - since, after their first joint meeting as co-commanders, Ren had referred to Hux’s smell as “the absence of a person” and Hux had told Ren to “try to smell less like you’re still being weaned off mummy’s breast milk.” Since then, Ren updates Hux of his movements on-ship via a sophisticated system of terrified employees, and off-ship by curt prerecorded holo-messages invariably zoomed in on the chin of his helmet. And Hux can usually count on the knight to stay clear of the command bridge too, knowing that it is Hux’s preferred habitat and that any attempt to trespass there will result in Hux throwing around words like ‘collaborate’ and ‘workplace synergy’, which has the effect on Ren of spraying a lothcat with water.

Even during the handful of times they have been forced to work together Hux has never had cause to fear his susceptibility to Ren's traits, to doubt the efficacy of his suppressants. In his default medicated state the other man smells like someone has deployed a canister of insecticide into Hux’s mouth – or, sometimes, if Hux is digging deep, like dark stagnant pond water: not quite hatred but the wistful longing for it. Not like kriffing cake batter.

But more simply, Ren has never been a threat as an alpha because, as far as Ren knows, Hux is also an alpha, one who is older, and more experienced, and demonstrably more in control of his abilities. Of the two of them it is Hux who leads their army and runs their ship, who can wield authority without devolving into fits of rabid violence. And it is Hux, not Ren, who has found a way to channel his aggression, his need to dominate, into serviceable tools for the Order: grand weapons and bold strategy worthy of Supreme Leader’s praise. Perhaps, Hux sometimes speculates, Ren avoids him because he suspects that if put to the test, if they are truly pitted against one another, Hux will prove the stronger, less-feral beast.

But that suspicion, if it exists, is founded on a lie, a simple misdesignation.

A.HUX/34/M_ALPHA.

He has worn the title not like a disguise but like a second skin, an impenetrable shield built by his father and shored up over the years by Hux’s own force of will. Each success, each victory adds to it, made it unscalable, infallible, such that he has never bothered to entertain the idea of a life on the other side it, of a version of himself without it. He walks among alphas and knows that he deserves the name of alpha _more_ \- that he has _earned_ it. He is _not_ an omega. Not like Dopheld with his simpering need and weak legs. Hux could no more wear that than a lace frock.

But now, for the first time the shield is wavering, undone by the smallest corruption, fritzing along its seams, peeling away at the center so that Hux can see what is waiting, has always been waiting for him beyond its protection: pacing, hungry – the wolf.

And the doctor - she’s seen it. He shoves the towel away from him, nostrils flaring. She has let him play with it like a damned _chew toy_. He’ll have to execute her. He’ll have to wait until Ferron leaves and then execute her. She can’t even look at him, her eyes darting sideways at the droid-- 

And then up at Hux.

And then slower, meaningfully, back at the droid; at the standby light blinking over its dark lens. “ _I’m_ really not permitted to say more,” she says again. “Sir.”

 _Oh_. Hux considers the droid, Med-X. The droid swivels at the waist, looking between the two of them with something bordering on suspicion. He wonders if it has been programmed to have ethics, if it will protest when Hux gets his hands inside it. 

Well, he’s still on the fence about snuffing her.

“I’ll go and prepare your prescription, General," the doctor says. "It shouldn’t take more than a minute.”

Hux glares at her. At some point in the near future he’s going to need to take a good hard look at why the same techniques she used to pacify and beguile his father work so well on him, but first he needs to appropriate footage of Kylo Ren doing a cough test out of that droid.

“Make it two.”

 

Hux departs the medbay with a mildly improved mood, a list of banal instructions for how to prevent himself from morphing into a wanton cock-crazed nymph, and an unsolicited diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder, which he is seeking a second opinion on.

Kylo Ren and his damned hand towel. Androstenol, the doctor had explained as she tugged the fabric slowly out of his hands (he’d unwittingly tried to leave with it). Hux can picture it: the knight easing out of his helmet, swabbing his brow. Had the doctor seen Ren's face? He’ll have to wait to see it for himself, the datachip burning a hole in his pocket. Was he ugly now? Twisted? The wound had still been cauterizing when Hux found him in the snow and he had taken his time getting him to the bacta. He hadn’t known if Ren was vain or not. It had just seemed like something, one small thing, that he could control, at the time.

And now Ren is controlling him, without conscious thought - his heart rate, his mood. Hux thinks back to the days after Starkiller, lost to grief, Ren’s sheets pulling apart in his shaking hands until he felt quieter, neutralized. Spent. The implications of that now - for it to be Ren of all people that has this power over him. Ren has always been dangerous in an incidental, convenient kind of way, like an impact grenade rolling in the direction of Hux’s enemies, but now he is dangerous to Hux. Which means Kylo Ren needs to invest in some military-grade deodorant or get the kriff off Hux’s ship.

Hux is in sight of his quarters and halfway to a practicable plan involving an AT-AT and a Ren-sized pair of forceps, outlook considerably improved, when the ship dies.

Once, when he was seconding under Canady aboard the newly constructed _Fulminatrix,_ the ship had lost gravity. As he would later hear it, they had stumbled upon a small fleet of New Republic vessels concealed in the shadow of an inconsequential fuel-stop moon. The fleet had no reason to be out ranging so far from the Coruscant System, and the _Fulminatrix_ had caught them unawares and with the better orbital vantage, but the existence of the dreadnought and her siege technology if discovered would comprise a material breach of the armament treaty and the Order was not ready to engage, so the captain made the jump.

Hux had hated Canady then and hates him now, but he has to concede a grudging measure of respect for the man’s shipcraft. It was only a veteran such as Canady who could have finessed that quick of a jump in a heavy-weight, bypassing her protocols and spurring her into hyperspace at such speed as to avoid detection. Hux grieves every day that he wasn’t on the bridge to see it done. Canady had a certain sort of theatre to his command style. But even in Canady's experienced hands the acceleration compensator stalled under the load. Hux awoke two feet off his bunk, falling, the first and last wail of the anti-gravity siren fading as it was cut and gravity resumed with a concussive thud.

This is not like that. Hux has spent most of his adult life on starships, the hum of engines under his feet and in his dreams. This is silence; stillness. The ship is coasting, her ion engines spinning on nothing. Hux is mid-step when it happens, a sequence of loud bangs approaching as the lights in each ribbed segment of the corridor shutter and die, pitching the ship into perfect blackness. Then...nothing. Just the ticking of filaments and the sound of his own measured breaths.

Hux turns around, and then around again looking for a guidepost, but the hall is deadened, empty; no standby lights, no movement, not even a wheeling mouse droid. He is on the floor approaching his quarters, a hall shared by senior command domiciles and a busy lift bank. At this hour ninety percent of his crew are sleeping, oblivious, but even if there is panic on the other floors, men and women scrambling to take up their emergency posts, he would not be able to hear it through the thick bulkheads. He holds his hands up to his face but can’t see them.

Then, out of the void: a scream.

Hux jumps out of his skin, spinning on his heel at the noise, eyes searching frantically in the unbroken darkness. _It is the door,_ his mind reasons over the thunder of his heartbeat in his ears - the door in its warped bracket, shrieking. His shared door. The generator power is on.

He breathes out in an annoyed shudder, hating the weak feeling of relief diffusing through his body.

“Ren.”

No answer. A footstep.

Hux’s mouth is open, about to rip the knight a new asshole for being dramatic when his brain catches up with what he has heard. The sound of the footstep is wrong, bare skin on the smooth floor. Hux knows all three of his co-commander’s emotions from the tread of his boots: surly dislike, contempt, rage. The man likely showers with his boots on. Which means…

 _No. The ghost is a figment_ , he reminds himself. _A story for frightened, malcontented subadults and superstitious crew._

“Declare yourself,” he says into the thick darkness – and is met with silence. He growls. “This is General Hux. You will decl--”

The door pings, bumping up against whoever is standing in its way. The ensuing shriek of steel as it winches open again makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand up. There is only a handful of officers with clearance to his quarters and all of them would have sounded off immediately on hearing his voice. 

“This is General Hux,” he says again, less certain. He’s not quite sure who he’s trying to convince anymore. He takes a step back, remembering the blade strapped to his arm. Before he can activate it there is a deep clamorous lurching noise: the engines gaining a charge, turning over, humming. A thread of emergency lighting - just enough to clarify the edges of the corridor and the outline of his own boots with dim red light – blinks into life either side of the floor.

Another footstep. And then another. The thing is running, maybe towards him or maybe away, feet slapping against the polished floor, echoing off the durasteel.

Hux fumbles blindly for the release on his monomolecular, backing up, feeling around behind him for a stabilizing wall. His hand comes up against something solid and then something is clamping down on his wrist hard enough to break it.

Turpentine. Incense. 

“ _Ren?_ ”

“ _Be quiet_.”

“ _You_ be quiet,” Hux hisses.

" _Be. Quiet_ ," Ren says again, lower, the vocoder fuzzing. The effect on Hux is like all the sound is walloped out of him, his body locking up, throbbing, throat seizing. His knees wobble. If Ren weren't holding him up by the wrist he would fall.

" _I can smell it_ ," Ren says, grip tightening. " _An omega_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks for reading! Drop me a line if you liked it!


	4. Meek and gentle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> New monsters and old.

They met, the first time, in a library. 

Hux wasn’t much for book-learning, originally; he was late to the ability – his mother’s fault - and working against type once he entered the Academy. Most of his time as a junior cadet was devoted to marksmanship, fieldcraft, displays of athleticism on the track and with a quarterstaff. All cadets were required to take academic cores but he had a knack for mathematics and technology that more than got him through, and anything he couldn’t get the finer point of he obscured with loud opinions that usually drove the instructors into a lather.

But then Rae Sloane had visited; enthused over his presentation of original vessel designs (modeled off what he already knew of her preferences, of course); and then - given her patronage to several of his slower, weaker peers.

“That hot-to-trot shtick won’t work with me, Freckles,” she said as her escort scrambled to get an umbrella over her head. She was already walking fearlessly into the blowing rain, her jacket soaked in moments. Hux watched her from the safety of the columned porch, furious, rain spattering the tips of his boots. “Keep your head down,” she said, climbing into the speeder. “Apply that keen mind of yours to some philosophy. Read the classics, then we’ll talk.”

And so here he was, kneeling on the hard carpet of the Academy’s least used building, rummaging through the archives’ dismal collection of data-tapes and flimsi and actual kriffing paperbound books in search of a way into Rae Sloan’s good graces.

The library was a solitary building of soaring structural glass; a modern instalment for housing the Academy’s gifts: artefacts from the Civil War, blasters preserved in carbonite, ornate holocrons bestowed by dour-faced dignitaries from the New Republic, a commemorative plaque for some outpost on Scarif. Whoever had designed the building had wanted it to be a marvel of light to showcase these treasures. But that person was evidentially not familiar with Arkanis, and the afternoon sky outside was a dark turbulent gray, thick with thunder, the rain drumming hard against the windows and casting strange rippling shadows over the stacks.

It was the steady beat of rain that muffled the sound of footsteps.

“That suits you.”

Hux looked up at the intruder: an older cadet, gold hair and sharp eyeteeth - his father’s new favorite:

Ferron, Kalder.

He closed the cassette case in his lap, slotting it back into place on the shelf and getting to his feet as quickly as he could without betraying his nerves. Ferron was some years senior to him and an unknown factor. All of the data Hux had on him amounted to this: Brendol preferred him. And he was tall.

“I heard you took Yarby’s eye out with a penknife,” Ferron said. He leaned forward as if they were sharing a joke. “Did it offend you?”

“He’s a lousy sniper,” Hux said flatly. “He won’t miss it.”

“Not until there’s another boy he wants to wink at.”

“He can wink at me again if he wants. He has another eye.” 

“And you have another knife.”

Ferron was smiling, a tight secretive thing, one of his canines peaking out and snagging on his lip. Hux found himself wanting to smile too. It was rare to find someone to indulge in repartee with. Points of contention voiced in the classroom were invariably met with cold disapproval, and Brendol’s preferred rejoinder to unsolicited conversation was a sharp backhand.

He scanned the library for the punch line – an audience, Ferron’s cronies waiting to pounce - but there was no one. They were alone in the stacks.

“So then, Younger Hux,” Ferron said when Hux’s attention had returned to him. The weak light washed him out, painted him in shades of sepia, but his eyes were a steady, lovely blue. “What are you doing hiding in the shadows of our illustrious bibliotheca? Waiting for your paramour?”

Hux cocked an eyebrow at him. “Is that one of your pretty sunnyside words for ‘lover’?”

“Ouch,” Ferron said, wincing, mocking him. “Maybe. I guess I’ve been off-planet so much recently I’ve forgotten what that is.”

It was clear from the smirk on Ferron’s face that he was tooling with him, taking the opportunity to remind Hux that he’d spent actual time on starships – and that Brendol had chosen him for it.

Annoyed, Hux said, “You’ll know when it winks at you."

This only seemed to delight the other boy who had to smooth the grin off his face with a hand. Hux tore his eyes away to feign interest in the shelves. “Why are you here, then?” he asked, unable to completely disguise his curiosity. “Shouldn’t you be off cavorting around the Territories or something?”

“Is that how you picture your father? Cavorting?" He scoffed. "No, I’m afraid it’s strictly goose-stepping around the Territories with Hux Senior.”

Before he could stop himself, Hux laughed. It was a timid, barking sound, unpracticed, and he immediately regretted it.

Ferron didn’t seem to mind, leaning up against the shelf, loose and easy. Where Hux wore his uniform with the pride and economy of having something to belong to - seams pressed lovingly each morning, boots brushed to a luster each night - Ferron wore his like an inconvenience, something he condescended to do while his First Order grays were in the making. He wore it neatly – there was a reason his chest was decorated with so many pins – but the arms of his shirt were creased from being casually rucked up, his cap slightly askew to show off the vain sweep of his hair. And he wore his box-jacket shrugged over his shoulders like he couldn’t be bothered to properly put it on.

Ferron let him watch him out of the corner of his eye with amused patience before speaking. “No,” he said. “I’m only in the puddle for a week. I’m supposed to do a stint aboard the _Despot_ next. Four months. And you best believe there’s no action under Captain Kasbac. Thought I’d stock up on bawdy literature while I had the chance.” He ran a finger over the nearest few cassettes. “ _Heroes of the Republic, Historia Galactica, The Inquisitorius_ …”

Hux felt a blush starting at the base of his throat. He wanted to say something witty about the erotic value of the _Historia Galactica,_ but he was still recuperating from the sound of that mortifying too-shrill laugh. 

“You didn’t answer my question from before,” Ferron said, perhaps reading his awkwardness. “What _are_ you doing here if not something illicit?”

“Grand Admiral Sloane recommended I read the classics.”

Ferron’s eyes widened. “Sloane, huh? You must really be something to have caught her eye.” 

“I am,” Hux said, tilting his chin up.

Ferron laughed. “Stars, your father told me you were ambitious but he doesn’t know the half of it does he?”

Hux held eye contact. “He will.”

Ferron’s grin turned dark and conspiratorial. “Not from me he won’t. I can keep a secret.” He straightened. “But if it’s classics you’re after then I have just the thing.” He came around Hux’s back and leaned up against him, a wall of heat, reaching up to pluck a book not so high above off the shelf. Hux froze up at the feel of him, warm and solid, the rough texture of his uniform sleeve brushing past his ear – but then he was moving away, unaffected, placing a small paperback in Hux’s hands.

Ignoring the frantic skip of his heart, Hux rubbed a thumb over the title. His heart sunk. 

_Beach of Stars._

The cover featured an improbably dressed red-haired woman pressing her bust against a viewport, the square-chinned object of her longing transposed over the swirling nebulae. He looked up, unimpressed.

“It’s a classic,” Ferron insisted, eyes laughing.

Hux turned the book over in his hands and read aloud from the blurb: “Will Kaius choose Asta or will he choose... _the stars?_ ”

“I think you’ll like the heroine. She’s a firecracker, just like you.”

“Get karked.”

“Is that one of your pretty wetside words for ‘thank you’?”

“Why don’t you go there and find out?” Hux said, giddy with pleasure. He ducked his head so that Ferron wouldn’t see him smiling, enjoying himself.

“No, thank you,” Ferron said coolly.

Hux didn’t begrudge him that. His home was a half-drowned jumble of soggy pre-fab buildings and farmland flooded with brackish estuaries. Hux had spent his first four years smelling indistinguishable from wet livestock. “Besides,” Ferron continued after a considered beat. “I think I’ve already seen the best it has to offer.”

Hux quirked his head up, confused, and found Ferron looking at him.

He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry.

“What’s it about?” he asked finally, deflecting.

Ferron studied him a moment longer before shrugging. “A pilot, a princess, an adventure among the stars. The hero has to make a choice: follow the path to greatness - a chance to make a name for himself, or pursue a woman who provokes him at every turn - who will change him forever.”

Hux threw the book back at him, disinterested. “And it ends with them both dying.”

“No, it ends with them kissing.” 

He made a gagging face. Ferron smiled again, more of a snarl, really. It made his handsome face look less pleasant, more of what Hux liked. He said, “I forgot you’re only ten.”

“Twelve,” Hux corrected.

“Well! All grown up then. Ready to die for the Order.”

“Children die every day in the Republic,” he said, bristling. “I’m old enough.”

The last three words fell into a pocket of quiet as the thunder outside rolled to a boom. Some determined soul still in the field outside let out a childish shriek of dismay, running for cover perhaps, their scream swallowed up by the rumble. The words reverberated and grew meaning in the pale, dry space of the library, the glass shuddering under the sheeting rain, the world outside blurry and indistinct

 _I’m old enough_.

Hux watched Ferron watching him, his face painted with strange fracturing light, the long spiky shadows of his eyelashes sliding over his cheeks. His pupils were deep wells.

“I believe you,” he said.

Hux looked down and away.

“Would you believe me,” Ferron said after a while, placing the book gently back in Hux’s hands, “if I told you that this book taught me everything I know about battle strategy - about winning?”

“This?” Hux said doubtfully, glancing down at the cover once more. “This is a book about warfare?”

“Better,” Ferron said, smiling. “It’s a love story.”

 

In the split-second before Ren opens his mouth, Hux can pretend they are versions of themselves that are the matched weapons Snoke imagined they would be: a perfect counterweight for each other’s skills and impulses; a Hux who can share control, and a Ren he can trust not to abuse it.

But then Ren says, “ _Be quiet!_ ” for the third time and jerks his wrist _hard_ – hard enough to dislocate his arm if Hux didn’t have the soldiering reflexes to pivot into the movement, coming up against Ren’s bulk like an overenthusiastic dance partner in the darkness. They both grunt with discomfort. Then Ren uses his grip and Hux’s stopped momentum to spin him back out and away, other hand rough on the back of his head, trying to pin Hux’s face to a wall that neither of them can see. Hux flinches, expecting to hear and feel the crunch of his nose and instead pitches forward into empty air, his hands coming up against the solid surface a fraction of a second later. It’s instinctive to propel himself backward from there, powering back off the wall into Ren’s open arms, full weight driving behind his elbow, seeking the newly healed bowcaster wound.

What ensues in the darkness after that feels like catharsis, sounds a lot like sex, and probably looks like two blind subadults trying to eviscerate each other under the guise of hand-to-hand combat. Hux will retell it that he almost had the Knight of Ren, at several points, inside of his surprisingly amateurish guard. And he will leave out the part where he tried to bite Ren’s thumb off. And when Ren somehow unerringly caught his fist in the dark, surprising them both into a moment of impressed stillness. But the spat ends with Hux stumbling backward, shoved behind Ren like an afterthought as the door to their quarters squeals in its tracks and they both remember the ghost.

Hux goes still, holding his breath, straining for the sound of bare skin on polished floor over the thud-thud-thud of his heart. The fine bones of his wrist throb angrily, his nose and cheek stinging where they caught the edge of Ren’s hand. Somewhere out in front of him the knight is panting, the air rasping in and out of his vocoder, ghastly in the claustrophobic dark. Hux doesn’t need to see to know that Ren will have taken a defensive stance, making the most of his long limbs. He tenses and realizes he is waiting, expecting Ren’s cracking, spitting weapon to sear to life like a fiery scar across his retinas. But it never comes. Ren’s lightsaber is lost, another casualty of the chaos on Starkiller.

Hux claps a hand over his monomolecular vambrace. Deploying it in the dark is a gamble. The blade is sharp enough to sever a finger if Ren’s ham-handed attempts to waltz him into submission have skewed the mechanism. He pats at his clothes for an alternative, but there is nothing in his pockets save for the pilfered datachip, and he highly doubts the intruder – ghost or not - is going to be dissuaded by a holo of Ren getting his cock decorated or whatever it is doctors do with alpha patients. Eventually he settles on edging closer to where Ren is still panting like a berserker, hoping to make himself the less appealing target for an individual attack.

Up close the heat coming off the other man is incredible. He hadn’t truly registered it during their struggle, but Ren’s clothes under his hands had been soaked through with sweat. The temptation to scent him, to get his nose in under the lip of the helmet and take a good satisfying whiff of the pheromones pouring off the other man is strong, but the booster has been in Hux’s system for less than an hour and he can’t risk it. He doesn’t want someone to have to come and tug Ren out of his hands like the hand towel.

He breathes shallowly through his mouth instead, afraid to find out what a full-blown alpha heat smells like, tasting the thick pungent fume of Ren’s sweat, and underneath, the fainter more dangerous bouquet of Ren himself.

He can place the incense now. Ren uses the stuff to meditate. Their supplies had been mixed up once, Ren receiving a palette of Hux’s loose-leaf tarine and Hux and Millicent perplexedly opening box after box of clumpy, resinous incense. The eventual handover had been comparable to a hostage exchange. But he’s handled enough of the stuff that he can recognize its smoky sweetness. It’s all over Ren; caught in the oil of his hair, in the creases of his gloves.

And another scent, deeper. A sort of burnt moreish taste that makes the base of his tongue seize--

Hux catches himself leaning into it and jerks back, dismayed, deadening his nose.

For a long while there is nothing in the dark but the sound of Ren’s obnoxious panting echoing around the corridor like sonar, ricocheting and multiplying until it takes on a life of its own. It’s more than exertion – Ren is either scenting for something, or trying to prevent a panic attack, or trying to annoy Hux into fighting him again. Hux muffles his own breathing with a hand, waiting for the dull occlusive pounding of his pulse in his ears to recede, eyes straining to pick movement out of the blackness. But what becomes apparent is that they are alone.

No footsteps. No vibrations. No uneasy prickling of his brain telling him that there is something just out of range of his sweeping hands. If the ghost can walk through walls then it has done so. Or perhaps in the confusion it simply slipped past them.

Hux straightens out of his nervous crouch, letting out a shaky breath.

“ _It’s still here,_ ” Ren says abruptly, voice grating through the vocoder. “ _The omega_. _I can smell it._ ”

“A trail perhaps,” Huxsays unthinkingly, wanting Ren and his big inquisitive snout away from him. “Whatever it is, it’s gone.” 

It’s the wrong response – weak, dismissive, suspiciously apathetic for a senior-ranked officer who has just been jumped on his own ship. Hux is notorious for running down even potential threats to his reputation. Fortunately, Ren sounds as if he is too worked up to pick up on the lapse of character. Hux can hear him shuffling, stomping around in short aggravated triangles, tracking over the site of their skirmish like a demented bloodhound.

“It’s gone, Ren,” he says, taking a discrete step back from where he estimates Ren to be, trying to establish a calm in which he can think. “You’re smelling an echo - residue, no more.”

“ _No!_ ” Ren growls through the distortive fuzz of the vocoder. “ _No,_ ” he says again, strangely emotional. Hux can hear him twisting, huffing behind his mask, his boots thumping, directionless - but coming closer.

His brain scrambles for a more substantial diversion. He could raise the possibility of the prisoner having escaped, but that would quickly lead to a dead end. Once they have power again Ren will check the interrogation room feed. It may only buy him moments.

Alternatively, he could invent another omega, a phantom to divert Ren’s attention elsewhere. But that would set them both on a path with too many variables outside of his control: a pointless, time-consuming chase through the ship; the ongoing charade of a search; a full screen of his crew. Leader Snoke would become involved, perhaps an inspector from the Galactic Vestigial Association. There would be questions raised about his competency, more tarring of his reputation, of his stormtrooper program.

No. The best course of action, as is always the case with Ren, is to shut him down (and deal with the corresponding tantrum later). 

“You’re mistaken,” he says, aiming for his usual firmness. “Your senses are fatigued.” He adds a touch of disgust to his voice. “The Resistance pilot’s filth is all over you.”

Ren growls again, frustrated that he is not being understood, like a hyperventilating toddler with a vocabulary of snotty tears. “ _No_ , _this is different._ _Not like the pilot_. _It’s…_ _It’s everywhere. It’s so--”_ He huffs noisily through his mask, pacing erratically, searching, almost frenzied.

Frenzied _._

 _Oh,_ Hux realizes with faint horror. _He’s excited._ His stomach flutters. _He’s smelling an omega. And it’s exciting him._

He swallows, mouth uncomfortably dry, chalky from the medicine. He takes another careful step back. He won’t be able to retreat any further without drawing attention to the distance he is putting between them. And Ren is mere feet away, still sucking in air in giddy, greedy breaths, chasing the scent of--

Hux tucks a discrete hand under his arm and pulls it out, shaking. Damp.

 _Dammit_.

“-- _like it’s pulling me to it_ ,” Ren is saying to himself. “ _Like it’s--_ ”

“In heat,” Hux finishes. It actually takes a moment for him to realize he’s spoken aloud. He feels numb, hyperaware of the perspiration collecting in the hollow of his throat, wetting the edges of his hair. When did it start? With the ghost? During the fight? He rubs a hand over his bicep, squeezing hard over the tender injection spot as if he can force the medication to work faster. _The suppressant will work_ , he assures himself. _Stay calm._

Calm -  _the smell of home_ : the creep of cold air under the front door; damp timber-hearts and salt marsh; the sweeping hiss of approaching rain. 

“ _Yes_ ,” Ren says, fierce with realization. He turns on his heel, hesitating just slightly when he seems to realize that Hux is conspicuously further away and taking a large consolidating step forwards. “ _You smell it too_.”

“No,” Hux says, grasping for an answer that won’t bring Ren closer. The knight is panting excitedly inside his helmet, heat coming off him in waves. He must be suffocating inside that thing. “No,” he says, landing on the idea. “I can smell _you,_ Ren.”

His hearing zeroes in on the subtlest creak of leather; Ren backing up a half step, fists clenching. A sore spot perhaps? Shame? Hux pushes the advantage. “You can’t control it, can you, your condition? Perhaps it's affecting your judgment.”

 _“No,”_ Ren insists, infuriated. _“It’s right here. I can smell it - so **strongly**.” _ The vocoder pitches, sticking on the word. “ _It’s like--”_ He stops, going still. Hux holds his breath, bracing for the inevitable explosion but Ren is ominously silent.

Then he feels it. Warmth, radiating against his front; Ren drawing closer, the air turning thick with his pheromones.

The mask statics softly, inches from Hux's face.

“ _It’s like it’s all over you_.”

Hux, before this moment, would have believed that this what all of his father's relentless, spiteful training had prepared him for. But Brendol hadn’t warned him – hadn’t been able to – what it would _feel_ like; like Ren has found a stray thread in the center of him and is pulling on it, the seam unpicking, the thread coming loose - and how he wants Ren to pull faster, so that he can just come undone; spill open.

The rehearsed denials dry up and die in his mouth, his nose itching with the sudden striking need to take one - just one - full, shuddering breath of Ren’s scent, as thick and as satisfying as honey and such a _relief_. His mind stutters over the idea - surrender, a hand smoothing over his throat, gripping hard, and Hux letting his legs give out from under him.

But then he remembers. 

 _That suits you._ The awful space that those words had carved out of him; the endless, humiliating hunger. No. He won’t have it. He digs his nails into the old scar on his palm, puts as much alpha steel in his voice as he can muster:

“I’m not going to entertain your delusions, Ren. I have work to do. As do you. Back. Off.”

Ren, of course, is not so easily deterred. He draws away slightly, but only so that he can circle, Hux turning to follow, blind, hooked by the sound of his curious drawl. “ _Don’t you smell it, General?_ ”

“I don’t," Hux says, voice sharp with nerves. "I don’t smell much of anything other than you right now. Maybe you should consider suppressants.” He sniffs. “Or at the very least a bath.”

Ren doesn’t answer him. Hux sweeps his hand out in the dark, instinctively, to make sure that he is not too close, his eyes skittering over every imagined spark of movement in the gloom. But Ren has stopped. His breathing is rhythmic, controlled, filtering in and out of the vocoder. His voice when he speaks is quiet, dangerously steady:

“ _You’re lying_.”

Hux glares, hoping the knight can see well enough in the dark to appreciate it, ignoring the panicked squeezing of his heart. “There is an intruder aboard my ship during a kriffing blackout,” he says, approximating snide contempt, “and one of us needs to make contact with the bridge. If you are going to continue to behave like a mindless animal--”

“ _You’re nervous_ ,” Ren interrupts. “ _You’re never nervous. I should have sensed it earlier. What are you hiding?_ ”

“I have nothing to hide."

“ _Oh_ ,” Ren breathes, looming closer. “ _I think we both know that you do_.”

His eyes are beginning to adjust to the soft amniotic glow of the emergency lighting and he can now make out Ren’s outline, the tiniest sliver of light describing the curve of his helmet. Ren's head is cocked, listening to Hux’s heartbeat. It takes every fiber of Hux’s dwindling resolve not to step back, his heart skipping a beat.

 _He knows_ , the little voice says. _He knows._

“Back off, Ren,” he tries again. “You smell like a sarlacc’s breakfast."

“ _No,”_ Ren says, fascinated, mask fizzing in the space between his words. _“No_ , _you don’t smell it_.”

Hux’s stomach lurches. He’s always hated the singsong quality of Ren’s voice, like he’s always puzzling something out aloud for his own benefit rather than contributing to a conversation - and he hates it even more in the dark.

He scoffs, airless and brittle. “That’s absurd. Of course I smell it.”

The mask stutters, fizzing in the tense silence that follows. A dozen frantic excuses flit in and out of range of Hux's mind and abandon him.

Ren takes another step closer. “ _Tell me_.”

Hux snarls, “Tell you? Who do you think you’re interrogating, Ren?”

Ren’s response is dark crushing silence. He can feel Ren’s attention on him like a physical touch, measuring the pulse beating urgently in his neck, looking for cracks to pry open, a way into his mind, pushing. Then--

**_Tell me, General_. **

It bludgeons the sound right out of him, drills right through his defenses like they’re flimsiplast, scratches up against the part of Hux that wants to fall and keep falling. _Tell me. Tellmetellmetellmetellme_ \--

He racks his brain for something, _anything_ to throw up against Ren’s invasion. He doesn’t know what an omega is supposed to smell like, doesn’t have the requisite olfactory receptors. _Mitaka_ , his brain supplies _._ Sometimes he can detect Mitaka. He feels Ren’s attention snag, stroke over the thought encouragingly, pride and pleasure blossoming up inside him to meet it. _Overripe fruit_ , he thinks hopelessly. _Sweetness to the point of rot--_

Ren withdraws so roughly it leaves him reeling, the roof of his mouth burning with the sour taste of someone else’s revulsion.

“Dopheld,” Ren spits, furious, thwarted.

“Perhaps,” Hux gasps, floundering for an answer. “Why--”

“No,” Ren says, clarifying. “Dopheld is behind you.”

And he is.

Hux recoils violently from the sweep of the flashlight trembling in his lieutenant’s hand, blinded by spangles of needling white light. The center of the beam picks Ren’s face out of the darkness like a nightmare, glancing off the silver visor, the scuffed, expressionless grill. Hux waits for him to burst into shreds of antimatter and shadow, to fly apart like a cloud of bats. But Ren is unfortunately not the kind of monster dispelled by light. 

“Sir…?”

Mitaka is leaning out of his room. Hux can only make out his silhouette behind the obscuring light, hair ruffled from sleep.

And then, because Hux’s life since the implosion of Starkiller has been a smuggler’s run of catastrophically bad luck, stepping out from behind him, is Ferron.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ghost: What's up  
> Ren: *mom-arms Hux out of the way*
> 
> Also, Ferron is the grandpa from Princess Bride but gross?


End file.
